Reserved MFT space on hard disk

[max]

Hi,

I'm installing a new 200gb hard disk drive for file storage,
and intend formatting NTFS.
My problem is with the reserved MFT on hdd of 12.5%
Which equates to about 25gb of reserved space on my hdd.

Is there anyway i can decrease this ?
I'd like it to be 1% ?


max

 

[Peter Foldes]

No I do not believe that you can. This is by default on hard drives that are
larger than 120gig. Maybe someone knows better and can correct me.

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

According to http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ntfs/files/mft.html 12.5% is the minimum.

Also see:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q174619
How NTFS Reserves Space for its Master File Table (MFT)

Per the article, the MFT is not completely "blocked out". If the space is needed for user files, it will be given up.

 

[Richard Urban]

You are not losing the space. It will be used if necessary for file storage.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[max]

Thanks for the quick replies,

I was hoping someone might have found a way to get it lower than 12.5%

I did abit of looking into it before I posted the original post,

I know I can still use the reserved space, but it makes a mess of the last
12.5% of data written to hdd,
it effectivly reduces the amount of data I can store on the hdd.

As far as I can tell, on my other 3 hdd (240gb) the MFT is 26mb, 9mb, and
4mb,
and its reserving something like 20-30gb in total at the moment.

I wasn't sure of the limitations to the registry settings, (1-4) ?

max


According to http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ntfs/files/mft.html 12.5% is
the minimum.

Also see:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q174619
How NTFS Reserves Space for its Master File Table (MFT)

Per the article, the MFT is not completely "blocked out". If the space is
needed for user files, it will be given up.

 

[WTC]

I wasn't sure of the limitations to the registry settings, (1-4) ?

[ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem ]

Value: NtfsMftZoneReservation
Type: REG_DWORD
By default Windows NT allocates 12.5% of the drives free space to the
MFT. The values for this registry setting are 1=12.5%, 2=25%, 3=37.5%
and 4=50%.

 

[frodo]

don't worry about the reserved space, it is NOT unusable, simply reserved;
you will be able to make use of it if it is needed.

If installing a 200 GB drive, I would initially partition it with just one
partition, however large you think is reasonable (20-50 GB or so, unless
you store some very big files, like video files to be editied or
converted). Then leave the rest unpartitioned until you need the space in
the future. It's easy to use Disk Manager to create another drive out of
the unallocated space when you need it. If you partition it all now you
may find it wasn't an ideal scheme 1 year from now when you get that new
device that would work better if....